Thoughts on a Revelation
by stingrae90
Summary: Sano can do a lot more deep thinking than he's often given credit for. So, just what was he thinking while Kenshin was explaining how he met Tomoe, and then came to lose her?
1. The Scene is Set

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They'd been in the dojo practicing for the majority of the time Kenshin'd been taking a nap. Yahiko and the Little Missy.

Only she doesn't look so much the Little Missy now. She's fully the Assistant Master of her father's style. Fully the teacher as she bashes Yahiko around the dojo, admonishing him to learn what the hilt can do.

I let the fox-lady poke around at my hand again. She's worried about Kenshin, about all of us, about what the future holds. She needs something to do, someone to scold. If badgering me about my right hand helps her calm down, I'm all for it. We might need her to be the clear-headed professional doctor all too soon.

I hear the dojo door slide open a second before I hear Tsubame-chan's startled "Kenshin-san!" I turn and see my best friend standing in the doorway to the dojo. He still looks exhausted. I doubt the nap did him any good at all. Even if he did manage to fall asleep. He still hasn't cleaned up any from the battles. Dust and dirt streak his gi and hakama; bruises that weren't there last night, but have shown up since, are sprinkled across the skin his gi leaves exposed to the air.

As Little Missy fills him in on her idea to pass down the techniques, I take an even closer look at my friend. By her sudden stillness at my side, I can tell the fox-lady is looking him over with a doctor's eye for injuries that might be less obvious to those of us not trained in medicine.

I'm not worried about his wounds, though. I've seen the guy fight through a lot worse than what he got from our last battles. The wounds he took from Shishio – hell, even the ones he got from Sojirou and Aoshi– are burned into my memory. I'll never forget it.

So I'm not worried about his injuries. I'm worried about his mental state. And it sounds weird coming from me. What do I know about a person's mental health, right? But I know he's been hiding something from us since I met him. I've known nearly from the beginning. After all, I did all that research to find out how to fight him, didn't I? And if there's one thing I learned from that, aside from the fact that he gave even the people he fought alongside the wheelies, was that only his commander and those who worked with him on a regular basis, namely the ones who verified his kills as Battousai, ever knew what he really did. He was a mystery even to his own side. He had secrets even back then.

I've never pushed him to tell us. Whatever he was keeping from us, whatever made his eyes become pained and far-away whenever he thought no one was looking; I knew it had to have been something from his time as the hitokiri.

But I can't shake the feeling that this trouble is going to drag out all sorts of secrets, kicking and screaming, from whatever dark corners they've been hiding in. And I wonder what that's going to do to Kenshin, who's been reluctant to tell the rest of us even the smallest thing about his time as Battousai.

Then Kenshin's speaking, holding Little Missy's wrist like it's the last life-line he has.

"There's something I want to tell you all. About this battle, from the beginning."

Kenshin's face is resolved, most of the pain so evident when he'd come back to the dojo hidden once more. Little Missy and the fox-lady exchange glances, before the fox-lady determinedly moves forward as Little Missy firmly suggests that Kenshin at least let the fox-lady look him over for wounds before any speaking is done.

I'm a bit surprised that he lets her do it. But the look on his face when he said he had something to tell us...Maybe he needs the time it takes her to look him over to compose his thoughts. Maybe he needs more time to figure out how to say what he needs to.

Then we're all gathering on the engawa surrounding the dojo, all supplied with cups of the tea the Little Missy had brewed with Tsubame-chan while the fox-lady looked Kenshin over.

I watch closely as Kenshin starts to speak, tea forgotten already by his side, hands clenched around his sakabatou so tightly I can see the whites of his knuckles even from my position leaning on the fence. Whatever he's getting ready to tell us, it's painful for him to speak of it.

"This morning, on my way home, I received a declaration of war from the mastermind behind all this…"

Kenshin's voice is low enough we're all but holding our collective breath to be able to hear him. I'm more concerned with the tightly controlled pain and anger I can hear behind his words; pain and anger I'm sure Kaoru and Megumi missed. They're too worried about the pain that's still obvious on his face.

"Ten days from now, he will attack the Kamiya Dojo with all his forces…"

Why give us a time of attack? Doesn't that defeat the purpose? Giving a man like Kenshin the time to prepare for your attack is like handing your sword to your mortal enemy and asking him to please consider not killing you.

Of course, Kenshin won't kill anyway, so maybe that hadn't been the smartest metaphor ever…

"This man's name is Yukishiro Enishi. My brother."

And my brain skids to a halt. A brother? But Kenshin's family name is Himura, not…

"More accurately, my brother-in-law."

I can't tell if someone, like me, made a noise at the revelation that Kenshin has a brother, but he'd clarified the relationship anyway, so it didn't matter.

But a brother-in-law implied there had to be a wife to have the brother…

"The brother of…" Kenshin pauses, and I catch the brief grimace of pain that crosses his features, but only because I'm looking for clues as to how he feels about all this. "…Himura Tomoe. The wife I killed with my own hands."

I can tell Little Missy's shocked. Everyone is shocked. How could Kenshin kill his own wife? Why would he have?

There was something missing. We didn't have the complete story yet, just the ending.

"It began in the Bakumatsu, the story of the hatred behind this scar…"

And as I listen, I can't shake the feeling that some kami had a bunch of malicious fun at Kenshin's expense. This tale sounded so much like a kabuki drama, it couldn't have really happened.

But the pain is evident on Kenshin's face. I've never realized just how much he never told us of his time as the hitokiri, until he started this explanation. He speaks with hardly a pause for breath, as if he believes if he slows down, he'll lose his courage and not be able to finish the tale.

I clench my fists…well, fist, out of Kenshin's line of sight. Not that I'm worried he's going to see it – no, he's too focused on the ground between his feet for that to be a concern - but because I don't want any of the others to think I'm angry at him. I'm angry at those bastards that used him during the Bakumatsu.

Maybe everyone else thought of the Triumvirate as the saviors of Japan, but every time I think of them, I see Okubo-san striding into the dojo, calmly explaining they needed to know how strong Kenshin still was. As if he were testing a tool that hadn't been used in too long.

And now, I can't help but wonder what kind of man Katsura was, that he could command Kenshin's loyalty and respect, for even now, in the midst of revealing the pain and turmoil he went through during the months he acted as the Battousai, not one word reveals a hatred or disrespect for the Ishin Shishi leader.

Me? I'm placing him just slightly above Okubo-san, but only because I never met the man. I'll trust Kenshin's judgment that he was a good man. Hell, I already had it pounded into my skull that not all the Ishin Shishi are bastards. But it's hard to remember that, looking at the result of that 'good man's' deeds. As my friend reaches the point where he first met Himura Tomoe, at that point still Yukishiro Tomoe, I can see something more than old pain in his eyes.

Suddenly I know why he has always remained at a polite distance from Kaoru. Why he has always appeared the oblivious fool around her, when we all know he misses very little of what goes on around him.

He loved this woman, this Tomoe.

And he still loves her.

I glanced over to Little Missy, sitting stock still beside Kenshin. Her eyes never left him, and I knew if he'd raise his head just a little, her eyes would be seeking out his own. There was a kind of hurt understanding there, tempered with shock.

What would this knowledge, that Kenshin had been married once before, do to her? It was obvious to all and sundry that she loved him. She'd followed him all the way to Kyoto even though she knew he had a mad-man after him.

But my attention couldn't stray for long from Kenshin's story. It was mesmerizing. He had never allowed anyone even a glimpse of what he had been like, how he thought, during the Bakumatsu. All we knew, all we had seen, came from his fight in the dojo with Saitou, and what we had witnessed during the fight with Shishio and his faction.

And as he told the tale of the confusing and mysterious woman who knew he killed on orders, knew he was a hitokiri, the woman who asked him questions that made him question his convictions and his own sanity at times, I couldn't help but feel despair tugging at my heart.

I knew how this story ended.

"_The wife I killed with my own hands."_

Kenshin spoke uninterrupted for over three hours. His voice grew slightly hoarse, but I wasn't sure if it was from speaking so much, or from the strain of keeping the pain he was re-experiencing from interfering with his story.

And then, as he told us of the conversation on the bridge, after the Ikeda-ya incident, I saw his hands, which had loosened somewhat on his sakabatou, tighten again. His hands had been a good indication about the intensity of his feeling for what he spoke of, while his face was a mostly blank mask. The tighter he gripped the sword, the more he felt, be it pain, or confusion or loss, or anger.

Kenshin stopped speaking.

"Ken-san?"

"Let me…catch my breath."

I supported his wish to pause for a few moments, because I could see he needed the break, and I needed it too. There was so much to absorb in what he'd just told us, and we were only half-way through the story.

Tsubame-chan broke the awkward silence by offering to get more tea. I took the offered distraction and headed off for snacks, Yahiko following me muttering about free-loaders. The fox-lady had gone ahead with Tsubame-chan to make the tea.

Kaoru stayed at Kenshin's side, and I couldn't decide if it was a good thing or not that she did.

--

A/N: I decided to break the story into two parts, following the outline Watsuki-san used in the manga. I'll post the second half in another few days.

A/N2: Sano consistently reveals thoughout the manga (and some in the anime, though they kinda fell flat on showing this side of his character) that he does have the ability to do some deep thinking and make connections between events that are widely separated on first look. And his conversation with Yahiko in the manga shows that he does in fact do quite a bit of connecting and thinking during Kenshin's explanation of his connection to Enishi. I wanted to explore what he might think, because Sano's a character that fascinates me, frankly. He alternately makes me want to join Kaoru in the bokken-brigade and bean him a good one, and at others I'm beaming like an old, proud grandparent when her grandkid does something smart. *shrugs* He's one of the more obviously human characters, in that we can see him consistantly make mistakes and try to make up for them. Not that the others don't make mistakes; Sano's are just usually more obvious.

But before I digress further, please, review and tell me what you think.


	2. And The Curtain Closes

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When we settled again, it didn't seem like Kenshin had even registered we were there. He didn't even twitch when I suggested we start again. There was a beat of silence, and then Little Missy straightened.

She didn't look at him, and she spoke quietly, but no one was left in any doubt that she spoke solely to Kenshin.

"Please, let's hear the rest."

Kenshin's head moved slightly. He lifted it enough that I could see his eyes through the fringe of his bangs. They were…almost hollow looking. I was inexplicably nervous, despite the relatively peaceful scene we'd left off with. Kenshin and Tomoe in that little house in Otsu, the chaos of the war far away in Kyoto…

"Very well. I will…continue."

And the very bland, emotionless tone to Kenshin's voice only cemented my nervousness. This would be bad. I could feel it.

But the story started out just as calmly as it had left off. The most disturbing bit of the story so far was the news Iizuka brought Kenshin of the capital.

And maybe it's just me being paranoid – Little Missy, the fox-lady, Yahiko and Tsubame-chan don't seem to have noticed, anyway – but I'm getting a bad feeling about this Iizuka. I didn't like him much when Kenshin first brought him into the story, either.

Or really, I hadn't liked the way Kenshin's hands had clenched nearly spasmodically on the sakabatou as he spoke of the man. The way his face had closed off even more whenever necessity had forced him to mention the man who had been the go-between for Kenshin's assignments as the hitokiri.

And now, even though Kenshin's face has been a blank mask from the start, his hands are starting to strangle the sheath of his sakabatou again. Gripping and releasing as if he subconsciously wants to throttle someone.

The fact that's only happened when he mentions Iizuka doesn't make me inclined to trust this man.

And what can I do about that anyway? Kenshin will get to the reason soon enough, I'm sure. And even if I'm right, that this Iizuka character is bad news, the guy's likely dead by now anyway. I can't do anything about whatever Iizuka did to make Kenshin seem to hate him so much.

And then I'm distracted from the small cues I'm getting from Kenshin's body language by a familiar name.

Enishi.

Well. The psycho finally shows up in the story. This cannot be good.

And I'm wishing Kenshin had been just a bit less considerate of his wife's privacy, since he can't tell us what the two of them spoke of while he watched the other kids playing in the yard.

But that's just Kenshin, I guess. Even as the hitokiri, he wasn't gonna pry into the private affairs of others. Even if he did have the right to. Tomoe was his wife, after all, shouldn't she have told him she had a brother before they got married?

And now, I have a bad feeling all over again, but for a different reason. Kenshin hardly knew anything about Tomoe before he married her. She couldn't have known much more about him. Although she had a distinct advantage in that she knew what his night job was…

I suddenly have the same feeling of unease I had right Captain Sagara and the rest of the Sekihoutai were declared a false army, right before Captain Sagara had been killed...

Tomoe had appeared practically out of nowhere, not exactly following Kenshin around, but always near, always watching him. And then she not only manages to gain his trust, but his love as well. And then they get married, hiding out after the Ikeda-ya Incident.

And now we have her kid brother, who Kenshin hadn't known about before, showing up out of the blue, to have a private reunion with his sister. And he _definitely _doesn't like Kenshin.

I'm really hoping I'm not right. But…all these pieces of the larger picture are starting to fall into place, and they look an awful lot like a trap designed to take down one of the most notorious swordsmen of the Bakumatsu.

I can barely hold in my curse as Kenshin tells of waking in their cabin alone, his only clue as to Tomoe's location a ransom note.

_If you want her back, come to the forest alone, Battousai._

I may not be the smartest person in Japan, but sometimes common sense and street smarts are better than formal learning. And right now, I'm _really_ not liking what my instincts are shouting at me. One look at Yahiko confirms he sees at least a little of the same thing I do. The kid spent a lot of his time growing up in the Yakuza, he'd be blind, deaf and _stupid_ not to see it.

Tomoe-san might not have wanted to deliberately hurt Kenshin at the end , but she had definitely taken part in a plot against him. It was the only thing that explained the timing. I'd bet anything Enishi had been the messenger – who better to not raise suspicion? - to tell her the time had finally come for their attack.

…but…she'd broken down in Kenshin's arms after Enishi left. This from a woman who had hardly ever shown any emotion in Kenshin's presence. She'd had an emotional breakdown. And Enishi's words…"if only you hadn't been there…"

What could that have meant? If only Kenshin hadn't been where? I didn't have enough information to figure that one out, but I did know one thing.

She tried to call it off.

Tomoe-san had tried to call off the attack, and then gotten pulled in as bait anyway. Or that had been the intent all along; planting her near Battousai to create a weakness they could exploit.

The curses are really hard to hold in now. Kenshin's hands haven't moved on the sakabatou for some time. I think he might have cut off the circulation in his fingers, he's gripping it so hard.

I'm not really surprised by the violence of the battles Kenshin's describing. It's only natural. As far as Kenshin knew, as far as _Battousai_ had known, these people had kidnapped his wife, and might potentially kill her if he could not reach her in time. It woke something in a man, fighting to protect the life of the woman he loves. There was no such thing as too far to go, no such thing as a feat too hard to perform. Not when it was _her_ he fought for.

I strongly suspected it was only thoughts of Kaoru that got Kenshin on his feet again after Shishio had knocked him out with the Guren-Kaina, after all. It sure wasn't anything to do with Saitou or Aoshi or even me, for sure.

I think Yahiko sees a little of it. Or at least, he's wondering how far he would go, if placed in the same situation. Those little side-long looks at Tsubame-chan give him away easily. His eyes are confused, but they aren't afraid. Kenshin's brutal description of the battles – of his own actions and how he had killed the two men who bared his way and critically injured the third – haven't shaken Yahiko's faith in him.

That's good. Yahiko still needs someone to look up to. And Kenshin's the best role model he could have, if he wants to be a master swordsman one day.

But Little Missy…I glance over to her, concerned. She hasn't moved either, it doesn't seem like. Her back is still ram-rod straight, tea cupped gently in between her palms. I don't think she's even taken a drink since Tsubame-chan gave her a new cup. And I can't see her eyes. Damn it. She's looking at the ground, head tilted at just the right angle to block her expression from my own gaze.

Well. She hasn't moved away from Kenshin. I suppose that'll have to do as an indication of her feelings for now. Though she might just be in shock. What Kenshin's describing is the very opposite of her family's style. Satsujin-ken is the principle her father rejected to create Kamiya Kasshin.

And it's definitely the polar opposite of the gentle rurouni Kenshin's been so careful to show us. It had to be bothering her. I just couldn't tell how much.

My thoughts are pulled back on track as Kenshin tells of reaching the cabin he knows has to hold Tomoe, and the confrontation with the last man who blocks his path to her rescue.

But...that uneasy feeling I'd had before? Well, it's back now, tenfold. Kenshin wasn't in any shape to fight another opponent right then. He wasn't exactly thinking clearly, or he'd probably have gotten Tomoe-san out of the line of fire before thoroughly beating the mastermind behind that whole nightmare into a bloody pulp. So…if he'd been unable to sense ki, see straight, hear much beyond the ringing in his ears _or _feel anything because of the cold temperature…

Tomoe-san had tried to stop this entire attack. She'd tried to call it off. And if she _had_ been in that cabin, and heard Kenshin's confrontation outside…

I really hope Tomoe-san has – had – more sense than that. But, I'd already decided that Tomoe-san did love Kenshin and well, love makes people do crazy things.

Including throwing yourself into the line of fire to protect your near mortally wounded spouse, who wouldn't be able to see or sense you in time to stop his own attack.

"_The wife I killed with my own hands."_

Is it really any surprise, now, how Kenshin's tale ends?

…

…

…

Kenshin pauses for several long moments after relating Tomoe-san's death. His hands are now gripping his sakabatou so hard I'll be surprised if he hasn't worn a permanent groove in the thing. I can't see his eyes anymore. He dropped his head again the moment he started to relate that final attack. And he's shaking. Not much. But you can tell if you look.

I sure he's holding back tears of remembered guilt and pain.

His tale doesn't extend much longer. Just a few more terse sentences. Kenshin had discovered that he had killed Tomoe-san's fiancé; I can't even imagine how hard that realization must have been for him. Iizuka had been the traitor, and it had been at that time Kenshin had retired from his duties as the Battousai and become a skirmisher. It had been then that Shishio had become the Hitokiri of the Shadows, and Iizuka had been his first kill. The only one Kenshin knew for sure.

I wasn't quite sure what I felt about that fact. But…Shishio had been a psychopath. Iizuka…he'd been a coward, selling out his own comrades to the enemy. It was fitting, in a way, that he'd been murdered on the orders of another. Just like he'd attempted to have done to Kenshin.

And I'm still not very inclined to like Katsura, you understand. He's still not much higher on my scale than Okubo-san, but…from the conversation between them that Kenshin just related, Katsura knew Kenshin was going to leave after the war was won. And he let him go.

Hitokiri Battousai had disappeared for eleven years. He hadn't been found until shortly after Katsura Kogoro's death, and even then it took nearly a year for Saitou to come calling for Okubo-san.

Well…I guess even an Ishin Shishi like Katsura can try and make up for his mistakes. Kenshin's noticeable. You look hard enough, you can trace where he's been all those years he spent wandering. I ought to know. The only way he could have been so thoroughly overlooked by the government was if someone very high up was pulling strings for him.

He's still not very high on my list, though. Protecting Kenshin from the idiot pigs in the government wasn't much of a repayment for everything Katsura put him through.

And Enishi…well, I guess we know what he got from that entire mess.

A deep seated hatred of Kenshin, the man who had killed not only his sister's fiancé, but also killed her.

I guess that would screw with a little kid's head. Probably why he's so unbalanced now.

I can't think of anything to say, and I'm still not sure how to handle all this information. Sure, I understand it, and I don't see that Kenshin has any real reason to feel guilty. He was the indirect cause of a lot of bad things, yeah. But he couldn't make those idiots behave in an honorable manner anymore than a man can live underwater.

But how do I get Kenshin to see that, when I can't stop the turmoil in my own thoughts?

I'm not sure he'd hear me, anyway. He's curled into as tight a ball as he can without actually pulling his feet from the ground, or folding his upper body down over his knees.

In the end, all I can do is walk away. Before I can even start thinking about how to show Kenshin this doesn't change that fact that he's my friend…

...I have to make sure I know what I think about everything he just said. What good will any reassurance I try to make be, if I'm still working through what I feel about it all?

But I'm not leaving his side. I'll fight with Kenshin in this battle, just as I've done before.

So what if his past is a little darker than even I expected?

It just makes him the stronger man.

--

A/N: Not much to say, other than thanks so much to the reviewers from the first chapter I wasn't able to respond personally to: caseyedith, whitehaizea and lellow. Please, continue reviewing and tell me what you think of this last chapter!


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